The American Dream

The American Dream. The American Dream is something we are all familiar with. We live our lives around it. We lose sleep over it. We are willing to sacrifice marriages, friendships, and even our children over it. Let's admit it: It is the heartbeat of our Western culture. Every student, after high school gradation, is expected to go to college and be successful. After all, the only way to make it these days is to have a masters degree, right? However, the more I read the gospels, the more I doubt the American Dream. What??!! Could it be that Jesus calls Christians march to a different beat than that of the rest of the world??? No way! Let us be reminded that Jesus is the one who said, "Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be my disciple." In other words, pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. The One we claim to follow also says, "Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." -("Go, sell everything yo have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven. Then come, follow me.") Hmm....this does not exactly match up with the "American Dream." Sounds to me that Jesus was asking His disciples to abandon their comforts, security, safety, dreams, goals, possessions, careers, and everything that is familiar to them and follow Him. But, that was a different time. A different culture, right? So, He certainly was not speaking to modern day Christians, or was He? David Platt's, Radical, has pointed many of these things out and helped me understand a lot about our western culture's agenda. As Christians, we tend to claim the verses like, "I come to give life, and life more abundantly." But, we do not think the verses like "sell all you have and give to the poor and follow me" do not apply to us. So do we have the authority to choose which verses applies to us personally?? It is time we face the truth: The American Dream is not biblical. Jesus calls all Christians to die daily, esteem others higher than ourselves, humble ourselves to the point of dying for our friends, hate our mother and father, go out in the midst of wolves as sheep, carry our crosses, give until it hurts, be a living sacrifice, live in community, go the the end of the Earth...abandon ourselves. This does not sound like the American Dream. The American Dream is self-centered and the God Dream is Christ-centered. There can be no balance. God requires us to be either hot or cold, no luke warm Christians are allowed or He will spit them out of His mouth! (He said it in Rev. 3:16! I didn't say it) What I fear the most is that the institution of the Christian Church is marching to the beat of the culture. Kids are having kids, children trying drugs, girls with identity issues, prostitutes searching for love, children becoming homosexuals, people committing suicide, sex trafficking (even in our own county!), children with no one to love them, children living in trash heaps around the world, kids being forced into war and a life of violent monsters, 600,000 children dying every day from malnutrition and preventable disease, and lets not forget the millions of people dying every day without hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, all the while the Institution of the Christian church is arguing over 500$ chairs for people to sit on if they are tired of standing, new carpet, better popcorn machines, new pews, better worship centers, more lights, more strategies to attract the people, the best technology, how to get people in, how to be better than the church down the road, how we can make the gospel sound appeasing instead of self-sacrificing like the gospel of Jesus Christ, when will we have our next meal to fill our bellies while others down the road may not have enough to feed the children that day, better, best, more, more, more... This may be a sick and twisted image, but it's true. It is time for the Church of Jesus Christ to rise up out of our pompous self-righteous religiosity and continue the revolution that Jesus started 2,000 years ago: The Revolution of Love.